Talking the Talk? How Many Ways … … Can Something Be Shared?: Trade Languages … and Trading Languages … Through Performance Skill Training!

By Melvin Pohlkotte

There's no available information at this time. Author will provide once information is available.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664138827

Melvin Pohlkotte

Melvin C. Pohlkotte II was born 1934, the middle child of a civil engineer and a school teacher. Jobs were scarce but infrastructure was a high priority in the years immediately following the great depression. Burned as an eight-year-old, Mel was held back in the third grade. Suffering a diving accident as a 15-year-old, he faced a life of partial paralysis. But God had other plans. Mel spent more than 65 years promoting skill training with focus on industrial, commercial, and residential maintenance skill transfer. Facilitating with materials in many forms and formats. His preference has always been "earn while you learn", with no accumulated educational debt., In 2003, recognizing the shift in national emphasis, Mel enrolled in and graduated from Master’s School of Divinity, earning a master’s in Biblical Studies. (Counseling emphasis). And in 2006 he enrolled in and graduated from Covington Theological Seminary with a doctor's degree in Ministry. The Author can be contacted in the following manners, Melvin (Mel) C. Pohlkotte P. O. Box 988 Soddy Daisy, Tennessee 37384 Phone [phone] Email: [e-mail]

Book preview

TALKING THE TALK?

How many ways …

… can something be shared?

Trade Languages …

And Trading Languages …

Through Performance Skill Training!

Melvin Pohlkotte

Copyright © 2020 by Melvin Pohlkotte.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 10/23/2020

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

812618

CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1: Terminology – Words By Which We Communicate

Chapter 2: Building On The Foundation

Chapter 3: Putting The Motion In Automation

Chapter 4: Things Do Not Always Add Up

Chapter 5: Things That Look Alike – … Are Not Always Equal Or Equivalent

Chapter 6: Motion Management … The Means And Methods Of Control

Chapter 7: A Challenge For Organizational Change Agency

Chapter 8: Putting It All Together

Book 1

Book 2

Book 3

Book 4

Book 5

Book 6

Book 7

PREFACE

In the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s, we were blessed with the humor, the antics, and the unusual logic of a great comedian, Gary Wayne Coleman. One of the more famous questions that Gary shared frequently was, What you talkin’ about?

Mr. Coleman died in 2010, but his persona, his theatrics, and more vividly his question lives on. I open with this tribute, because for so much of my personal career, that question has confronted me as I set forth my position on skill training.

Although I have enjoyed the benefits of education, I learned within the first few years after graduating from an engineering school, just what I had not learned. I did learn about manufacturing, and the role of various segments of the manufacturing organization. I did learn about the function of maintenance and the different accountabilities of operations, and administration.

I did learn about the role of engineers, marketers, and executives. I also did learn that the role of maintenance departments was to keep production processes and equipment in operation, assuring maximum up-time. What I did not learn in school, or even gain a hint of in the many textbooks, the many complexities involved in that simple expression, assuring maximum up-time.

I had completed 4-years in a co-operative program so I had become quite familiar with the workings of the operations department of a major automotive manufacturer. Although I knew about the presence of the maintenance department, and the work order process for requesting maintenance attention to a concern, I had no clue about a maintenance organizations procedures or problems.

My ignorance was short lived though, because my co-operative program required my completion of a one-year research and thesis project to fulfill my graduation requirements. I had been sponsored by the engine plant, but there was no agreement on a thesis title. So, I applied for a position and a research opportunity in the foundry maintenance department.

My first lesson in remediating my ignorance was enunciated immediately on my first day as a supervisor in the foundry maintenance department. Whereas I had spent 4 years in an environment that involved one instructor, and 30 students, I became painfully aware of the fact that now, I was in a class of one student (me), and 32 instructors (my employees).

To the man, these 32 employees would ridicule my accent or enunciation of the words as I attempted to read the work orders that had been submitted by production overnight. I did not have a difficulty with the words that had been used, my difficulty was with the word phrases that were used, and the way they described the objects that needed to be worked on.

Bear in mind, my prior visits to the foundry were to the office, to be interviewed. I had appeared for those interviews in by best clothes and neatly polished shoes, so the management did not feel it would be appropriate to take me on a tour. On my first day, I was in mechanics laundry blues, and wore company prescribed steel toed safety boots.

Tours were no problem, every employee wanted to show me their interpretation of the worst place in the foundry. Every one of them knew of hot places, dirty places, noisy places, etc. It only took two of these guided tours to persuade me that I was on trial.

Among the 32 employees, I had two blacks, one native American Indian, and 4 Hispanics. So along with the personally guided tours, there was quite a variation in language arts, and particularly with dialect, and colloquial expressions.

That was the first few days. Within the first two weeks, we had a severe breakdown on a piece of equipment in the core room. While considering what to do and who to seek out to make mechanical repairs, the maintenance superintendent suggested that I (being an engineer) visit the trade school on the property, and see if they could undertake the task.

I had been with the company for a bit more than 4-years at that time, but I was not aware that the company ran a trade school. To be honest, I was shocked that the company would run a school that was competing with the corporate college that I had attended.

I was more shocked the moment I set foot inside the trade school building. I am not certain that I expected to see drafting tables and file cabinets, but I absolutely did not expect to see one of the best equipped machine shops of that day. Nor did I expect to see nearly every machine being operated at one time.

I was extremely pleased when the trade school director immediately accepted the offer to machine a replacement part for our machine, and to undertake the restoration of the machine as part of their training. Within weeks, the machine was up and running, and I had become acquainted with the management of the trade school, and several of their students. Through those associations, I began to learn about job roles that had never been discussed or even hinted at in my years at school.

But those brief exposures to the trade school people were only my interview so to speak. As the trade school administration learned more about me and my education, they asked the foundry manager if I could be available to assist in developing curriculum and performance objectives for their students. That was agreeable and during the negotiation we determined that the trade school would like to build or repurpose foundry equipment as a means of providing real world experience.

Suddenly, the question, "What are you talking about, real world experience?" Do we not live in the real world, and what type of experience do we have if experience is not real world? Another shock, cracking my armor of ignorance. Although my father was an engineer, I grew up in a rural community in a town with a census count of 180 people. We did have a small grocery/post office combination. Oh, and a telephone exchange managed by humans with plug in jacks to connect with callers, and those they were calling. No street lights, one major intersection, and the simple life.

I was always curious about things that my father was doing on the job, and often times I would discuss what I was studying in science, or math with him. He would confirm what I was being told, but shared that I should not be surprised if I found out later that things do not behave quite that way in the real world.

Within a few short weeks of working with the trade school, my ignorance was totally exposed. Not only was the environment different from the schools I was acquainted with, so were the people. In math class in school many of our class had difficulty solving problems to the nearest hundredth. In the trade school activities, some of their apprentices were making measurements to the ten-thousandth of an inch.

In school it was not uncommon to witness cheating. In the trade school, no one worked closely enough to each other to cheat, and by intent the people closest together were working of different types of projects.

In school we talked textbook language (today that is typically identified as politically correct). In the trades program they talked shop talk, they did shop math, and instead of reviewing lecture notes or text books, they referenced trade related glossaries, job aides, or customer blue prints and specifications.

Seriously, day and night in the foundry, or the trade school, I was learning many things that I honestly thought I had learned in college. What I truly learned was the diametral difference between Academic Grading (norms, scales and curves), and performance evaluation against national standards (evidence based, and historically validated). Today that equates to the difference between education and training.

GRADUATE STUDIES

Looking back on that early start, I thank God that I had the privilege of a co-operative education, that I earned while I learned, and did not incur educational debt. In my formal education (COLLEGE), I studied for and earned a Bachelors in Industrial Engineering. But about my second year I came to the realization that the role of an Industrial Engineer in that era was to use a stopwatch, and a clipboard, and the observation of the activities of work, to establish performance standards, and establish the cost of manufacturing.

I was not excited about that discovery so I did some research into alternatives and began enrolling in Mechanical Engineering courses as overloads or electives. That took me into the fields of mechanization, mathematical analysis, and motion management. At my request, my job assignments were directed more to automation and continuous process improvement.

I also am so grateful for my enrollment in the school of hard knocks (the school colors were black and blue); of course, here I am talking about the foundry. In college, I learned the theory, and got to practice with a lot of simulators and toys. In the foundry, with a great crowd of witnesses and 32 instructors, I learned about

• real terms, … words and phrases that were spoken to discuss a matter; differing words and phrases that were used to develop work orders and a plan of action; still different words and phrases used by suppliers to identify and source parts or replacement items. Frequently action words or phrases, unlike the descriptive words of the text books. The greatest sources for these action words were reference materials like the millwright’s handbook or the Howard Sam’s library for do it yourself clients (long before DIY became a marketing slogan).

• real tasks, … complex work routines that frequently involved service literature research, part modification, cleaning, refinishing, and the use of a host of differing tools.

• real tools, … real in this context meant appropriate. I had 32 maintenance employees spread over 12 trade specialties. No two toolboxes were equipped the same, and each owner took extreme pride in his favorites (usually wrapped in felt, or specialty tool holders. In that era, there was no such thing as tool checks and a tool crib for common hand and portable power tools or test instruments.

•